


Bloodlust

by Ariasha



Series: Bloodlust [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Gen, M/M, Team as Family, vaguely dubious morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26431900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasha/pseuds/Ariasha
Summary: Immortality comes at a price
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Everyone
Series: Bloodlust [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921279
Comments: 13
Kudos: 97





	Bloodlust

Andy is the first.

Her human life ends on the battlefield, betrayed and left for dead by the woman she loved as a mother. But she does not die. Instead she clings to life, surrounded by the bodies of the dead. Crows come to pick at the corpses and Andy has barely enough strength to push them away. Then day turns to night and suddenly there are much worse scavengers than crows on the battlefield. Monsters appear, creatures shaped like people but with eyes glowing red and teeth as sharp as knives. They pick over the fallen, draining the life out of those who still clinging to it.

When one of them comes for Andy, she does not have the strength to fight it off, although she still tries. The monster with the face of a man sinks its teeth into her neck and she struggles even as she feels the blood drain from her and her life trickle away. It is not a fight she can win and she knows that she is going to die. But for some reason, the creature heeds her desperate struggle and pauses.

“You are a strong one,” the monster says. “I think I will let you live.”

Andy does not know what he means. Even if he doesn’t kill her, she will still die here on this battlefield. Her wounds are fatal and nothing can save her now.

Then, the pain hits her.

Not the pain of her injuries from battle but something much worse. A fire growing from the place in her neck where the monster had bitten. Burning through her body, lighting up every nerve with pain. It reduces her to ash and builds her anew, forged in the fire of her agony.

She does not know how long it takes for the pain to subside. Only that when it does, everything is different. The world is brighter, louder. She is stronger, faster. And she is so hungry.

* * *

When Andy is turned, there is no word for what she is. Over the years, mortals give many different names to her kind and speak of them in fear.

Demon. Lamia. Shtriga. Mandurugo.

Vampire.

* * *

Joe and Nicky strike each other down. It is only right that they are turned together.

The blood-soaked battlefields outside Jerusalem’s walls are the perfect place for those who feed on blood to find new victims. The two of them lie dying side-by-side. Joe with the blade of a longsword through his abdomen and Nicky with a gash from scimitar slicing through his torso. They would have bled out together, beside each other in life and beside each other in death, had the undead not come creeping to feed.

When the monsters come, they are so eager for the feast laid out before them and driven so mad with greed that they do not even bother to make sure their victims are fully drained before they move on to the next.

It is this that starts the change in them both. Hovering on the edge between life and death with just enough venom in their systems from the bites in their necks to drag them from the brink of death into a new, cursed life. They writhe together in agony for three days until the change is complete.

When they open their eyes to find that they are no longer human, the first sight of their new lives is each other.

* * *

They try to destroy each other many times before finally finding peace. This is how they both discover that vampires are very hard to kill.

* * *

Booker is almost dead when the monsters find him, choking on the end of a rope. All he had wanted to do was go home to his wife and sons and now, he thinks, he never will. He has resigned himself to death as the last of the air is crushed from his throat when he hears a voice from behind him.

“This one is still alive,” says the voice, filled with glee. “And he smells delicious.”

“Then let’s not pass up on such an easy meal,” replies another, words chilling Booker down to the bone.

After that all he knows is pain.

* * *

Nile is sure she is going to die when the man she had shot lunges up and sinks his teeth into her neck. Dizzy cries out beside her, swinging her rifle around and firing again at the man. He rips his teeth from Nile’s neck and runs, fleeing out the door with inhuman speed.

Nile sees none of this, too busy choking on her own blood. By the time the medic arrives, the bleeding has stopped but the pain has not. They pump morphine into her but it does nothing. For days she baffles the doctors on the base, writhing in pain from a wound that has mysteriously vanished. At the end of the third day she wakes up, and everything has changed.

* * *

Nile expects to see relief in her friends’ eyes when they come to visit her in the hospital tent. She doesn’t expect the twin looks of horror she receives instead.

“Dizzy? Jay?” she asks worriedly when she sees the expressions on their faces.

Neither of them reply. Nile takes a step towards them and they both flinch away from her. It hurts, it hurts so much because they are supposed to be her friends and Nile has no idea why they suddenly look so afraid.

“What’s wrong?” she asks because she’s still the same person they have known for years, recent near-death experience or not. Nothing has changed. Except maybe for the way the world seems too bright and loud around her, but Nile puts that down to a side effect of all the pain meds she’s been doped up on.

“Nile,” Dizzy whispers, still staring at Nile in horror. “Nile your _eyes_.”

“My eyes?”

Nile searches for the nearest mirror and holds it up to her face. She barely recognises what stares back at her.

Her mother had always told her that she had her father’s eyes. They are a warm and comforting brown, just as her father’s had been. Or at least, they used to be. But now Nile can see for herself what has scared her friends so much because her irises are no long brown but a bright, burning red.

Her hand instinctively flies up to clutch at the crucifix around her neck.

“What the fuck?” she whispers, staring at a face that she no longer recognises. “What happened to me?”

Her friends do not reply.

* * *

“Don’t you get it?” snaps the woman who kidnapped her, looking exasperated. “You’ve been changed. You’re one of us now.”

“One of you?” Nile asks, mind still reeling from everything that has just happened to her. “Who are you?”

“Andromache the Scythian. I lead a clan of people like us.”

“People like us?” Nile says in disbelief. “What are you talking about? I’m nothing like you.”

“Yes, you are,” the woman replies, eyes sharp and predatory “You’re a vampire.”

“Bullshit.”

* * *

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to believe any of the shit you’ve just told me,” Nile insists once they’re on the plane. “Vampires don’t exist.”

“Neither does God, but you still seem to believe in him just fine,” Andy replies, gaze flicking to the cross at Nile’s neck.

“What, so I’m just supposed to believe that I’m suddenly some kind of mythical monster that burns in the sunlight and can’t eat garlic? You really expect me to believe that?”

“The garlic thing is bullshit. So is the burning in the sun, obviously. Humans have gotten a lot wrong about us over the millennia.”

“You’re insane.”

“You can believe me or not, I don’t care. But you know what happened to you doesn’t have another explanation. You almost died and came back from the brink of death after three days in agony that no doctor could explain. Now everything seems too bright and you can hear every little piece of machinery in this plane. And you’re hungry. More hungry than you’ve ever been in your entire life and no food that you eat has managed to satisfy you. And it never will.”

Nile opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out because that part at least is true. Ever since she woke up there has been a burning in her throat and a clawing in her stomach that refuses to go away. No amount of food or water has been able to sate it. It used to be bearable but with every hour that passes it grows stronger.

“You’re young,” Andy tells her. “The hunger won’t become unbearable for another few days. You’re still full of your own human blood. But before long, the craving is going to drive you mad. You’ll believe me then but by then it will be too late. Don’t be an idiot. You’ll have to accept the truth sooner or later and sooner is better for everyone. Now get some sleep, you’ll need it.“

“I thought vampires didn’t sleep?”

“That’s another myth. We can sleep, just like humans.”

“So, do you have a nice coffin I can lie down in or…”

Andy rolls her eyes, turns over and ignores Nile as she falls asleep.

* * *

The atmosphere at the dinner table is filled with a strange kind of tension. Nile can tell the others are trying to pretend they’re not staring at her, but she catches them sneaking glances out of the corners of her eyes. Eventually, the silence becomes too heavy and she finally breaks it.

“So are you good guys or bad guys?”

The dark-haired man to her left who had introduced himself as Joe chuckles.

“That depends on your point of view. “

“We fight for what we think is right,” says the man opposite him. Nile thinks his name is Nicky.

Nile doesn’t feel very reassured.

“But what do you…” she doesn’t know how to delicately phrase the question. “…eat?”

The three men at the table glance at each other and an entire conversation passes between them silently. From behind her, Nile can hear Andy’s snort of laughter, but there is no humour in the sound.

“We can eat normal food, just like humans,” Joe says delicately, but Nile can see that he isn’t saying everything. “But...”

“We can’t always save people without things getting a little bloody,” Nicky continues, voice soft. “And when blood is already spilled…”

“We get a free meal,” finishes the man sitting next to Nile who had called himself Booker.

Nile feels faintly ill. She is suddenly very glad that the dark red liquid the man is drinking out of his glass is wine and not something more… human.

“I won’t do that,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not going to drink blood like some kind of monster.”

“You won’t have a choice.”

Andy’s words are as cold as her eyes.

“You can’t make me,” says Nile, feeling defiance rise within her. Andy may have kidnapped her, but she refuses to let these people drag her into their twisted game.

“I won’t have to,” Andy tells her bluntly. “You’ll do it yourself. You won’t have a choice. You won’t be able to resist it.”

“ _We’ve all tried_ ,” she hears Booker mutter into his glass.

“The hunger will drive you insane,“ Joe explains and his voice is soft and kind. “Nicky and I tried, many years ago. We refused to drink. Isolated ourselves, starved ourselves in the hope that we would be able to resist. By the time Andy found us, there was nothing of ourselves left. We had been driven mad with hunger. If any humans had stumbled across our hideout we would have slaughtered them without thought. It’s too dangerous to deprive yourself. At least the way that we do it allows us to make sure we only kill those who deserve it.“

Nile doesn’t want to think about the implications of his words. Too much has happened and she doesn’t have the ability to deal with any more horror right now. So instead she asks a question that has been bothering her ever since Andy kidnapped her.

How did you find me? How did you know that I was like you?”

“We have contacts all over the world who tell us of any news that suggests a new one of us has been created,“ Nicky tells her. “We heard the story of a marine in Afghanistan who survived the impossible and woke up a medical miracle. We all knew what had happened. It is very rare for a new vampire to be made. Even rarer for one to be made by accident. But it does happen. Booker was the last one we found. 1812.“

“No way.“

“Yeah, I was turned while fighting with Napoleon.“

Nile looks back at Nicky, not sure if the feeling rising in her chest is horror or awe or a twisted combination of both.

“So you’re even older?”

Joe smiles fondly, eyes flicking between Nicky and Nile.

“Nicky and I met in the crusades.”

“The _crusades_?”

“The love of my life was of the people I’d been taught to hate.”

“We tried to kill each other.”

“Many times.”

They speak of it so fondly, as if what they’re saying isn’t both impossible and completely insane.

“So we really never die?” Nile asks, head reeling from this new and terrifying revelation.

“Nothing that lives, lives forever.”

Andy’s voice is quiet, but there is a pain in her words that is unmistakable.

“But you said we were immortal?”

“I know what I said. And we mostly are, but we can die. And one of us did.”

“How?”

“We’re hard to kill. Almost impossible. Usually it’s only other vampires that can do it. It’s rare that a human is able to do any damage to us at all unless they’re very lucky. Most of the rumours are bullshit. Crosses won’t harm us and neither will holy water. Putting a wooden stake through our hearts will only piss us off. We can even survive having our heads chopped off, although it’s not a pleasant experience. But fire… Fire will destroy us. Permanently. If you tear us apart and burn the pieces, then we will die.”

“It’s a lot to understand,” Nicky says at the expression that Nile knows is written across her face. “I think you should get some rest. Come with me, I’ll show you.”

* * *

When she learns about Quynh, it’s too much. The idea of being trapped forever, unable to die but still able to suffer is a weight she cannot bear. Nile leaves the house and Andy follows her and it’s only because of that that they aren’t there when the men attack. When they return to the church, Booker is groaning as he pieces himself back together and Joe and Nicky are gone.

Andy goes after the men that attacked them with a fury that is terrible to behold. Nile doesn’t see her fight, but she does see the carnage left in her wake. Men with their throats ripped out, blood splattered on the pews and up the walls. When she sees Andy outside, there is blood smeared across her face. When Andy opens her mouth to speak, Nile can see the wickedly sharp points of her canine teeth, dripping with the blood of dead men.

Nile can no longer look her in the eye.

* * *

Nicky wakes up to the cold press of metal against his face and the warmth of Joe’s hand on his shoulder. He feels raw, and his lungs burn. It’s instinct to reassure Joe that he’s alright, but it takes everything in him to drag himself upright. Joe tells him that they are in an armoured van, that they were knocked out with gas, and Nicky silently curses. Not even a hundred years ago, it was nearly impossible for humans to incapacitate them. But modern technology has allowed humanity to gain an edge they have never had before and, rare as it is, it is now possible for humans to gain the upper hand. Not that they will hold it for long.

Guards surround them, dressed in black. They wear body armour, as though that will be enough to protect them. Nicky can feel cuffs around his wrists and ankles and his skin burns with the tell-tale bite of silver. It means the men must have done their research about what it would take to restrain them. But their mouths are still left free, and that is a mistake. A very deadly one. Neither he nor Joe need their hands to kill a man.

Leaving their mouths free also allows Nicky to enjoy the very impassioned speech that Joe gives when one of the guards tries to insult them. He will never tire of hearing Joe professes his love, no matter how many times he has heard it before. He leans in for a kiss, but it is only a few seconds before they are rudely interrupted by the guards. Separating him from Joe is unforgivable. He catches Joe’s eye and can tell that Joe is thinking the exact same thing.

Nicky snarls and lunges for the nearest guard. Before anyone can move to stop him, he sinks his teeth into the man’s neck and rips out his throat.

* * *

“Why me?” Nile asks Booker as the two of them sit together, the light of the fire the only thing illuminating the darkness of the cave. “Why was I turned?”

Booker shakes his head.

“That way madness lies,” he replies.

“I thought you were the brains of this outfit,” she tosses back and he laughs. “Back at the church, Nicky said my change was an accident. But how can you turn someone into a vampire accidentally?”

“With shit luck, that’s how,” Booker sighs. “For us, not the ones who turn us.”

Nile raises an eyebrow expectantly.

“Most vampires are created deliberately,” Booker continues when it’s clear she is not satisfied with his answer. “Not very often. Since we don’t die naturally, most vampires avoid making more of us so that there’s less competition for territory. But every now and then a vampire will find a human they deem special enough to change.”

Booker takes a swig of his flask and when he smiles at her it’s more of a grimace.

“And then you have the ones like us. The mistakes. Do you remember how you were turned?”

“A bite,” Nile replies, rubbing her hand against her neck as she feels the ghost of teeth tearing into her throat. “I was bitten.”

Booker nods.

“It’s the venom in our saliva that starts the change. Most humans are either bitten with the purpose of being turned or drained dry before the change can start. But sometimes, a vampire leaves their prey without making sure they’re fully dead. As long as our hearts are still beating, the change will begin.”

Nile remembers Dizzy’s scream and the sound of her shooting the man who had sunk his teeth into Nile’s throat. Now that Nile knows what he was, she knows that the bullets wouldn’t have killed him. But they probably still hurt. Enough to send him fleeing and leaving Nile still alive with venom coursing through her veins.

“Is that what happened to you too?” she asks.

Booker grimaces and nods an affirmative.

“The bastard who turned me had gorged himself so much on other soldiers that he didn’t even bother to finish me off properly. Just drank his fill and left, assuming that I’d freeze to death or die from blood loss before the change could complete.

“So there’s no purpose to this?” Nile says, partly to Booker and partly to herself. “Just…bad luck?”

“Yeah, but don’t feel too bad about it. It’s how we were all created. A bunch of orphans dragged into this life by mistake.”

“Orphans?”

“Abandoned by our creators. Most new vampires have their sires to guide them. But none of us did.”

“But you have Andy.”

This time, Booker’s smile is genuine.

“Yeah, we have Andy. She had no-one to guide her when she was turned. So when she found out that there were others, she started tracking new ones down. As far as I know she’s never turned anyone herself, just adopted us like strays.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Have you ever turned someone?”

Booker is silent for a very long moment.

“No,” he says finally. “I offered once, a very long time ago. I used to have a wife, and three sons. When I realised that I couldn’t age, couldn’t die, I offered to share my immortality with them.”

“And they didn’t accept it?”

Booker lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob.

“No, they didn’t. They called me a monster. Even when he was dying, my youngest son Jean-Pierre refused to allow me to save him. He told me that I had sold my soul and he wouldn’t allow me to condemn him to the same fate.”

Nile sucks in a breath, watching as pain twists itself across Booker’s face. She wants to offer him some kind of comfort, but there is nothing that she can say that could alleviate even a fraction of his misery.

Booker takes another drink from his flask and Nile sits in silence, watching the fire as it dies.

* * *

Nile is going to leave. She wants to go home, back to where things make sense. She can’t be a part of this group, where their lives are full of loss and violence and blood.

Nile is going to leave all the way up until the point where she sees the empty gun.

It’s then that she knows she can’t turn her back on the strange little family that she has stumbled into. She could never live with knowing that she walked away when they needed her. So she turns around and goes straight back to Copley’s, where she finds the man on the floor with his head cradled in his hands.

She thinks it’s going to be hard to force him to reveal his secrets, but the words flow out of him like water. He tells her where the others are, explains his desire to end disease and how it was never supposed to be like this. Shows her his wall where he has marked out centuries of good deeds.

He offers to take her to Merrick’s lab and she agrees. She doesn’t let him come in with her though, because there is no point in dying to rectify mistake. He is much more useful alive.

She fights her way through the building, still marvelling at how she can shake off bullets like they are nothing. She finds the others in a lab, strapped down to tables with chains that shimmer under the harsh white lights. They spring up when she frees them. All except Booker, who remains desolate in his misery with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Nile doesn’t let him remain that way. She didn’t break into a top security building to leave a man behind.

* * *

They fight their way out, and the smell of blood grows stronger with every man that dies. Nile can taste it in her throat, can feel it filling up her senses. It’s not distracting, not yet, but it soon will be. Andy had said she had a few days before the hunger became unbearable and Nile is starting to think that her time is running out. She still can’t imagine tasting any of the crimson liquid spattered across the floor but instead of the sight making her sick, it is starting to look very tempting.

Surprisingly, she isn’t the first one to break and give in to temptation. After taking several bullets in the back for Andy, once they are holed up in a reasonably defensible position, Booker is the first one that she actually sees feed. He sinks his teeth into the neck of one of the guards whose fingers are still weakly twitching. Nile knows that she should be disgusted, but the smell of the blood overrides any of the human instincts she has to feel horror of the sight.

“I’m sorry,” Booker mumbles, blood smeared across his chin. “I haven’t fed in too long. If I want to help us get out of here, I need to drink.”

Nile barely registers the words. She is too fixated on the red liquid dripping down his throat and how it smells so utterly delicious.

* * *

Keane shoots Nicky, and that is something that Joe can never forgive. He breaks the man’s nose open with his fists and relishes the sound of bones breaking as he slams him into the ground. Keane struggles against him but he is no match for Joe at full strength and furious.

Joe licks the blood off his knuckles and eyes the place where Keane’s pulse beats frantically in his neck. He hasn’t properly fed since South Sudan and he feels no remorse taking the blood of someone who never deserved life.

When Nicky darts into the room, gun at the ready, Joe can see his nostrils flare at the scent of freshly spilled blood. Joe holds up the struggling body in his arms and grins, bearing his teeth.

“Want to share?”

* * *

Just when Nile thinks that the fight is over, Merrick appears. He is holding Andy’s axe, and that alone makes Nile’s blood boil because a man like him could never deserve a weapon like that. Then he opens his mouth and spews his vile words about how priceless they are, and the scent of blood is heavy in the room, and Nile can’t take it anymore. When he raises a gun to point at Andy, she lunges forwards with superhuman speed, and sinks her teeth into Merrick’s neck.

* * *

They all meet back up in the lobby of the building once the fighting is over. Nile is buzzing with new energy, barely able to stay still as it courses through her veins. She feels like she could take on an entire army singlehandedly. She can’t even bring herself to feel bad about Merrick’s death because he had threatened _Andy_ , and if anyone deserved to die it was him.

The others all look like hell. Their clothes are riddled with bullet holes and they are all covered blood. Most of which, Nile suspects, is not their own. Nicky is still licking the blood from his teeth and Booker has traces of red smeared across his jaw.

They pile out onto the street, trying to be as inconspicuous as five people can whilst looking like the victims at a particularly gruesome murder scene. The streets are empty. The pedestrians probably fled when they heard the sound of gunfire but Nile knows that it won’t stay deserted for long. The police must be on their way and she has no desire to be there when they arrive.

Hurriedly, they all pile into Copley’s car. Andy takes the wheel and soon enough they are speeding away from Merrick’s building, leaving the labs behind them like some kind of vivid nightmare.

Nile doesn’t know where they are going, or what they plan to do next. There is still so much left unfinished and the future is uncertain. Just days ago, Nile was in Afghanistan and knew exactly where her life was headed. Now she has no idea. But at least, she thinks, looking around at the people in the car with her, she doesn’t have to face the uncertain future alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a joke about twilight and somehow became a real fic. I don’t know how. One minute I was joking about how one of the minor characters in Twilight has a backstory about being turned into a vampire accidentally during a battle and how that would work weirdly well for TOG characters, and the next minute I’m 4k deep into a new AU that is way more serious and less crackfic than I expected.


End file.
